ATLANTA
— Krell Industries went to
the CEDIA Expo with a new president,
its first Blu-ray player, a new CD player
and plans for an iPad app.
The new president is Bill McKiegan,
who was promoted from global sales
and marketing director. He replaces
Walt Schneider, who became president
last December following his promotion
from COO.
The company hasn’t yet filled McKiegan’s
previous position.
The new Blu-ray player is the company’s
first, due in December at
$15,000. Since its introduction earlier
this year, the Evolution 555 Blu-ray
player adds network streaming of Hulu
and Netflix video-on-demand services
and UPnP to stream audio, video and
pictures from a UPnP-equipped PC
or network-attached storage (NAS)
device. Additional streaming services
might also be available at launch. The
player also accepts a USB stick to
play stored media.
The player, shown in prototype form,
will be upgradable to 3D in the second
quarter via a dealer-installed videoboard
swap, McKiegan said.
The 555 also features IP control for
control from a networked PC’s web
browser and from a planned iPad app,
due in December. It will be the company’s
first app.
The 555 is a Profile 2.0 BD-Live
model with 1GB of onboard memory,
Ethernet port, optional 802.11b/g/n
wireless card, and Krell’s proprietary
Evolution CAST (Current Audio Signal
Transfer) technology, which sends
audio signals between components in
the current domain to eliminate cableinduced
distortion and lower the noise
floor to its theoretical minimum.
The 555 also offers a vertical
stretch feature for home theaters using
2.35:1 Constant Image Height display
systems to eliminate black bars
at the top and bottom of the image
without adding distortion or artifacts.
It comes with HDMI 1.3 ins/outs, but
the planned video-board swap will upgrade
the device to HDMI 1.4.
The new CD player, which just began
shipping, is the $2,500 S-350a
CD player, which brings digital coaxial
and optical inputs back to Krell CD
players to enable them to operate as
an outboard DAC for PCs and other
products. The company offers a USBto-
coax adapter at less than $100 for
PC connections.
